NES Nintendo Classics updates its September 2026 catalog with three games that show how varied the 8-bit era could be: Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, R.C. Pro-Am II and Ikari Warriors. The lineup combines a tough cinematic action platformer, an arcade racing game with vehicular combat and a run-and-gun shooter born in arcades. In Japan, Dragon Buster is available instead of R.C. Pro-Am II.
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is the final NES entry in Tecmo’s original trilogy, first released in 1991. It once again puts players in control of Ryu Hayabusa across side-scrolling stages built around precise jumps, wall climbing, enemy placement and anime-style cutscenes. Compared to earlier entries, it adds the ability to hang from pipes and ivy, swing upward, drop down and use secondary weapons during certain traversal moments. At the time, the game was received positively for its pace, presentation and challenge, but the North American version became especially known for its harsher difficulty, limited continues and lack of a password system.
R.C. Pro-Am II comes from Rare’s early 1990s catalog. It is an isometric racing game about radio-controlled vehicles, following the original R.C. Pro-Am with twenty-four tracks split across standard circuits, cityscape routes and off-road courses. Its strength is the way it mixes racing with messy combat: players need to place high enough to continue, avoid hazards, collect money, buy upgrades and use weapons such as missiles, bombs and freeze beams against opponents. The four-player mode was one of its most praised features, turning each race into a compact battle of lines, crashes and small acts of sabotage.
Ikari Warriors brings an important piece of SNK arcade history to the update. Released in 1986, it sent two commandos through a vertical run-and-gun battlefield filled with soldiers, tanks, helicopters, grenades and power-ups. The arcade version stood out through its rotary joystick, which allowed movement and aiming in different directions, while two-player co-op gave it immediate arcade appeal. It was also a major commercial success, becoming one of the stronger arcade performers in Japan, the United Kingdom and North America during the second half of the 1980s.
The value of this update is in the combination. Ninja Gaiden III speaks to the memory of demanding action platformers, R.C. Pro-Am II to players who enjoy compact competitive racing, and Ikari Warriors to anyone interested in the rough energy of mid-’80s arcade shooters. Players who want to follow new additions, releases and catalog changes can use the Playority Calendar to save games to their account, receive notifications and keep personalized updates organized around catalogs, dates and platforms.
